Leather & Lark (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #2) (100)

My heart races. My hands shake. I try her phone again as Fionn and Rose meet me at my car, but Lark still doesn’t answer.

“We called Rowan but he and Sloane are in Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend. They’re on their way home but it’s gonna take a while.” Rose’s face is creased with worry as I withdraw my gun from the glove box. “What’s going on? Where the fuck is Lark?”

“I don’t know. She called me to say her aunt died. She was supposed to meet me at the nursing home, but she never showed.” I lead the way to the main door and grab the door handle only to find it unlocked. It swings open to the textile production floor where there’s no sign of anything amiss. “Conor just found information about the man who’s been targeting her family. And now Lark won’t respond to any of my calls.”

I stride toward the stairs, taking them by twos, Fionn and Rose close on my heels. The worst fears I never could have imagined suddenly pile up around me with every step I take.

“The guy was right fucking there. He was in my goddamn shop. He spoke to Lark, shook her hand. He’s been around us this whole time and I had no fucking clue.”

By the time we reach the apartment I feel like I might vomit. The desperation and panic are so foreign they’re overwhelming. I keep hoping my phone will suddenly ring, that Lark’s smiling face will pop up on my screen. But it stays silent. And I’m not sure I can survive what I might find on the other side of the door.

I hesitate for just a moment, letting Rose and Fionn know with a nod that they need to stay behind me. And then I twist the handle and push it open.

Blood coats the floor and my knees buckle. It’s my brother who holds me up long enough to stumble into the room and regain my balance.

“Lark.” My despondent plea receives a pained whine in reply. I surge forward into the living space and find Bentley lying on his side near the table, blood coating the white patches on his fur. He whines again, a sorrowful cry that incinerates my crumbling heart.

“Save that fucking dog,” I order my brother as I scramble for tea towels from the kitchen and toss them to Fionn.

“I’m not a vet—”

“I don’t fucking care, save that goddamn dog.”

I stalk toward the corridor where the bedrooms are, calling to Lark as I go. My efforts are unrewarded. I check the bedrooms and bathrooms, but there’s no sign of Lark, nothing out of place except her absence. I return to the living room with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and clippers clutched in one hand and my gun in the other. Rose has bloodied towels pressed to Bentley’s side as Fionn threads a needle.

“I’ll do what I can to stop the bleeding now and get him to the vet,” Fionn says. I hand him the clippers and he shaves off a line of fur next to what looks like a deep stab wound. When he glances up at me, Fionn’s expression is grim. “Do you have any idea where Lark could be?”

“No.” I scan the room and spot her phone near the coffee table, a broken lamp nearby on the floor. There’s a bloody streak across the screen. My missed calls and texts and notifications from the Uber she never took flash on the backlit glass when I pick it up.

Lark needed me. And I wasn’t there.

An anguished scream fills the room. It comes from me.

Tears fill my eyes as I toss the phone on the couch. I want to pace. To run. But there’s nowhere to go to escape the way I feel.

“I wasn’t here,” I whisper.

A hand wraps around my forearm and squeezes, and I look down to meet Rose’s fierce determination.

“Think,” she demands as the dog whines behind her. “There’s got to be something. Something weird. Something out of place.”

I press my eyes closed and search the darkness. At first, all I see is Lark’s face. How beautiful she is when she’s trying to get under my skin. How she looked on that stage, singing to me. Her body beneath the sheets the first night we spent together, the way she smiled when I turned for one last glance from the doorway.

And then it strikes me, an image that burns brighter than lightning.

“Across the street. He was across the fucking street.”

I stride toward the door, Rose right on my heels. “I’m coming with you,” she says.

“Rose, don’t,” Fionn says, his voice breaking. “Please.”

We stop just long enough for Rose to turn and face him. He’s kneeling on the floor, a hand still placed on Bentley’s side. “Lark is my girl. I’m going to get her back.”

“But—”

“I love you, Fionn Kane.”

Shocked silence fills the room. I expect Fionn to say something, anything, but he doesn’t. It’s as though her words are so unexpected that he can’t process them.

Rose takes a step backward toward the door. Fionn stares at her like he’s frozen. Rose takes another step away. “Save the dog or this asshat will kill you.”

Then Rose strides past me, pulling a huge hunting blade from a sheathe hidden beneath her shirt. When I turn toward my brother, there’s anguish in his eyes.

He swallows, but his voice still comes out uneven when he says, “Keep her safe.”

“I will. I promise.”

I jog to catch up with Rose. When we reach the bottom of the stairs we burst into the cold air, heading for the building across the street.